An empirical study of haptic-audio based online shopping system for the blind

Abstract

The objective of this study was to demonstrate a haptic-audio based system which could enable the blind to shop online independently. The goal was to find out whether a web design with haptic and audio modality, speech recognition and speech synthesizer are usable for shopping and product evaluation. The results showed that an active framed three-section layout design with directed dialogue and cues, along with a haptic-audio enabled browser and a low-cost Falcon device is usable for the blind to navigate, interact, access and haptically evaluate online products; a VoiceXML based shopping cart can enable the blind to interact and verify the cart content; and a voice recognition based payment system can enable them to make online payment.